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While President Bush considers a broad-based amnesty plan for millions of illegal aliens in the U.S., there is growing evidence the Mexican border continues to be used as a covert entry point for the smuggling of Arabs into the country.

An Arab-smuggling ring was broken up just last month, reports Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, an online, premium intelligence newsletter published by WND. The seven-member ring included a former Mexican diplomat who worked in Lebanon's consular ministry office and gave out passports.

The newsletter also reports convicted Arab terrorists involved in the bombing of the World Trade Center and other acts of sabotage have used the porous Mexican border as an entry point and have also capitalized on previous amnesty programs to establish residency in the U.S.

Foreign-born Islamic terrorists have continued to use almost every conceivable means of entering the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, including every aspect of penetrating the U.S. immigration system.

Militant Islamic terrorists have come into the U.S. as students, tourists and business visitors. They have sneaked across the border illegally, arrived as stowaways on ships, used false passports, and have been granted amnesty and citizenship. Terrorists have even used America's humanitarian tradition of welcoming those seeking asylum, reports G2 Bulletin.

And there is no question Arabs have used the porous border between the U.S. and Mexico and the immigration problems it poses for Washington to its advantage.

Mahmud Abouhalima, a leader of the 1993 Trade Center bombing, was legalized as a seasonal agricultural worker as part of the 1986 amnesty. Only after he was legalized was he able to travel outside of the country, including several trips to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where he received the terrorist training he used in the bombing. Abdel Hakim Tizegha, involved in the millennium plot, sneaked across the border posing as a Mexican migrant.

It's not just a question of Arab terrorists buying their way into the U.S. with the cooperation of border "coyotes." There is also a political alliance developing between separatist Hispanics and Muslim radicals.

(Arabic journal found on Mexican route to U.S.)

On its website, a group called "La Voz de Aztlan," the Voice of Aztlan, identifies Mexicans in the U.S. as "America's Palestinians." Many Mexicans see themselves as part of a transnational ethnic group known as "La Raza," the race. A May editorial on the website, with a dateline of Los Angeles, Alta California, declares that "both La Raza and the Palestinians have been displaced by invaders that have utilized military means to conquer and occupy our territories."

But the threat of secession is not merely from groups that might be considered on the fringe. Former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo said in a 1997 speech in Chicago to the "National Council of La Raza," a Hispanic advocacy group, that he "proudly affirmed that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders and that Mexican migrants are an important ? a very important ? part of this."

Zedillo said that because of this fact his government proposed a constitutional amendment that allows Mexican citizens to hold dual citizenship. Spencer believes that the objective is to enable Mexicans in the United States to vote in the interest of Mexico.

Ultimately, many Mexicans hope for a "reconquista," a reconquest of territory lost when Mexico signed the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo at the end of the Mexican-American War.

The U.S. has tripled its border patrol budget over the past five years, but the flow of immigrants has barely changed. At the same time, Mexican President Vicente Fox has pressed for an eventual erasure of the southern border and encouraged Mexicans who seek work in the U.S.

According to a survey conducted in June 2002, a healthy majority of Mexicans claim that their country rightfully owns much of the southwestern United States, while most Americans believe Washington should adopt stricter immigration standards and deploy U.S. troops along the border. The Zogby International poll found a majority of Mexicans say the U.S. Southwest "rightfully belongs to Mexico," and that Mexican citizens should be able to come into those areas freely, without U.S. permission. The poll found that 58 percent of Mexicans agree with the statement, "The territory of the United States' southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico." Zogby said 28 percent disagreed, while another 14 percent said they weren't sure.

President Bush says he wants to see a Palestinian state carved out of Israel. It may be very difficult for him some day to explain why an Aztlan state should not likewise be carved out of America.

Activists who quite literally see themselves "America's Palestinians" are gearing up a movement to carve out of the southwestern United States ? a region including all of Bush's home state of Texas ? a sovereign Hispanic state called the Republica del Norte.

"There are great similarities between the political and economic condition of the Palestinians in occupied Palestine and that of La Raza in the southwest United States," explains an editorial from earlier this year in La Voz de Aztlan in Los Angeles, the city seen as the future capital of the new Hispanic state ? much like Jerusalem is seen by Palestinian Arabs as their capital.

The editorial goes on to draw analogies between the Arab uprising in Israel and gang violence in Los Angeles. It's the same thing, the activists claim. This is not crime and punishment, according to the La Raza (literally, "The Race") activists, this is the birth of an independence movement by young Hispanics.

"The similarities are many," says the editorial. "The primary one, of course, is the fact that both La Raza and the Palestinians have been displaced by invaders that have utilized military means to conquer and occupy our territories. The takeover of our respective lands by foreign elements occurred 100 years apart. For La Raza, it happened in 1848 when Mexico lost the southwest at the end of the Mexican-American war and the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidlago. For the Palestinians, it occurred in 1948 when the Zionist Jewish People's Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum and signed the 'Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel' on the day in which the British Mandate over Palestine expired."

--------------------"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination."-- Mark Twain

The real life horror story that began eighteen months ago when an Arab illegal alien named Youseff Balaghi showed up at a San Diego hospital, dying from what the Border Patrol initially?and erroneously?feared was radiation sickness, has now reached high into Mexico's foreign service.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Imelda Ortiz Abdala was Mexico's consul in Lebanon. On Nov. 12, 2003, Mexican authorities arrested her, according to the Associated Press, "on charges of helping a smuggling ring move Arab migrants into the United States from Mexico." The AP said Mexico had also arrested "alleged ring leader Salim Boughader Mucharafille." Boughader earlier pleaded guilty in the U.S. to the smuggling incident that resulted in Balaghi's death.

Unfortunately, this story is not over.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Skerlos prosecuted Boughader. This week, citing Ortiz's arrest, I asked him if there were other rings still bringing Middle Easterners in from Mexico.

"Yes," he said.

Another Front

Far from Iraq, there's another front where the terror war's not over. It's on our own border?and, here, the key enemies are the smugglers who bring people such as Balaghi into California, and who collaborate with allegedly corrupt officials such as Ortiz.

In congressional testimony in 2002, then-Assistant Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Joseph Greene said: "Information available to the INS indicates terrorist organizations often use human smuggling operations to move around the globe." According to a Library of Congress study, "Organized Crime and Terrorist Activity in Mexico, 1999-2002," former Mexican national security adviser Adolfo Aguilar Zinser said in May 2001: "Spanish and Islamic terrorist groups are using Mexico as a refuge."

How is the U.S. countering the threat of terrorists using human smuggling operations and finding refuge in Mexico? Rather than securing our border generally, the government tolerates large-scale illegal immigration, while trying to selectively stop the smuggling operations most likely to move terrorists. The administration, Greene told Congress, has put in place an "enforcement initiative aimed at targeting alien smuggling organizations specializing in the movement of U.S.-bound aliens from countries that are of interest to the national security of the United States."

Balaghi was from Lebanon.

On June 5, 2002, he showed up, vomiting blood, at Scripps Memorial Hospital-Chula Vista. He quickly died. When the Border Patrol heard his symptoms, they feared radiation sickness?and dispatched an agent with a detector to check his remains.

Balaghi was clean. But he was far from the only Middle Easterner Boughader's ring had smuggled.

In an affidavit, Border Patrol Agent John R. Korkin said an investigation "positively identified at least 80 Lebanese nationals that have been, or were intercepted in the process of being, smuggled into the U.S." by the ring. Boughader admitted in court to smuggling more than 100. He was sentenced to one year in prison, and deported to Mexico in November.

Almost immediately, Mexican authorities arrested him in their own anti-smuggling case. A few days later, they arrested Ortiz.

She had worked in Mexico's foreign service for 25 years. From 1998 to October 2001, AP reported, she was Mexico's consul in Lebanon. She later directed the consular office in Mexico City.

She was fired in May, AP said, "after 150 Mexican passports were stolen and two others were found to have been issued irregularly."

Jose Santiago Vasconcelos, Mexico's assistant attorney general, told Notimex that Boughader's ring moved "a great number of Arabs" into the United States. El Occidental, a Mexican newspaper, said it was "at least 200."

I asked Skerlos to compare that number to the "at least 80 Lebanese nationals" cited in Korkin's affidavit "I think it is fair to say that the numbers we included in our affidavit were conservative," he said.

Almost a month after Ortiz was arrested, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said: "The bottom line is, as a country we have to come to grips with the presence of 8 to 12 million illegals, afford them some kind of legal status some way, but also as a country decide what our immigration policy is and then enforce it."

No, Mr. Secretary. We already have immigration laws. It's your duty to enforce them. If the arrest of a Mexican diplomat for helping to smuggle Arabs into the U.S. can't convince you of the need for that, what will?

--------------------"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination."-- Mark Twain

We need to seal the border until we can come up with a better system for allowing people in. If that means shooting illegals as they cross, so be it.

--------------------You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers

1) There are a greater number of illegal crossings from Mexico to the U.S. - there is safety in numbers.

2) Semitic people (I'm not talking about Ashkenazi Jews) can more easily blend in with Mexican people due to physical characteristics.

3) The Mexican government encourages mass illegal immigration to the U.S. (it acts as a political safety valve and allows them to avoid instituting fundamental political changes which would upset the status quo).

4) The political climate whipped up by the 'PC' crowd and pandering by elected officials to the 'Hispanic' lobby to gain votes (yes, even votes from non-citizens) help to assure that #1 and #3 will not be effectively addressed on this side of the border.

--------------------"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination."-- Mark Twain

--------------------You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers

Actually it would be more accurate to say.....
"Get off my property you damn filthy criminals!"

Because their nationality doesn't matter. It's the fact they are here illegally.

--------------------You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers

IT is somewhat of a semantical argument, however...they are only illegal immigrants because someone decided to make it illegal...It is the same argument about drugs...there are so many drug crimes because someone made drugs illegal...

This country wasn't always set up so that only certain people could enter the borders...I think that killing someone, or for that matter punishing someone for crossing a line on a map is a little barbaric.

Certainly, if they are not a citizen, they are not entitled to the benefits of citizenship, but does that include standing on the earth? After all, this land has only had its current name for a couple of hundred years...

Quote:Certainly, if they are not a citizen, they are not entitled to the benefits of citizenship, but does that include standing on the earth?

Where have you been?

--------------------You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers

In various states around the US illegals have as many rights as Americans.

In some states....they can vote because there are no safeguards in the system to prevent it. They can easily get drivers licenses. They get free medical care. They are provided attornys. Food stamps. Translators. The list goes on.

Why do I have the feeling you knew exactly what I meant though?

--------------------You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers

How could I know what you meant? I clearly stated that they are not entitled to the same benefits as citizens. That doesn't mean that they cannot get these benefits by manipulating the system. This is no reason to try to stop people from crossing a border...this is a reason to fix the system...

I realize that this is a fear-driven country, so there is apprehension about "outsiders"...but...I'm just as wary of those who are already citizens...I don't see how protecting a border makes us safer.

--------------------You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers